Coronary artery bypass surgery, also known as coronary artery bypass graft (CABG, pronounced “cabbage”) surgery, and colloquially heart bypass or bypass surgery, is a surgical procedure to restore normal blood flow to an obstructed coronary artery. A normal coronary artery transports blood to the heart muscle itself, not through the main circulatory system.
There are two main approaches. In one, the left internal thoracic artery, LITA (also called left internal mammary artery, LIMA) is diverted to the left anterior descending branch of the left coronary artery. In this method, the artery is “pedicled” which means it is not detached from the origin. In the other, a great saphenous vein is removed from a leg; one end is attached to the aorta or one of its major branches, and the other end is attached to the obstructed artery immediately after the obstruction to restore blood flow.